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The Colorado Mineral SocietyAnnouncements & E-mails |
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From the desk of Pete . . . . Dear friends, colleagues and educators, Friday, June 13, and the second Friday of every month through November, Free USGS GPS, Map, and Compass Classes. Building 810, Federal Center, Lakewood; 9-11 a.m. Map & Compass, 12-4 p.m., GPS class. Call 303-202-4689 or email gpsworkshops@usgs.gov for reservations, or see www.cr.usgs.gov/gpsworkshops/index.html for more information. Tuesday, June 17, the monthly Café Scientifique at the Wynkoop Brewery, Denver, 6:30-8:00 p.m. An all-welcome, stimulating, interdisciplinary science lecture-and-discussion format series, free (except for beer). June speaker: Edward Janoff, MD, Department of Medicine, University of Colorado Denver Prevention of Infectious Diseases: Vaccines and Immunity. Held in the Wynkoop's Mercantile Room, 1634 18th St., Denver (across from Union Station). See http://cafescicolorado.org/ for an a summary of the talk and more information on future Café dates and about Cafés held in Boulder, Colorado Springs, and Frisco as well as in Denver. This will be the last meeting until September. The Friends of the Florissant
Fossil Beds National Monument sponsors a summer series of seminars
and field trips relating to fossils, nature, and geology. I'll give
a capsule list of the titles & dates here; the complete info is
linked from their website, http://fossilbeds.org/,
so if you are interested, please contact them, or write to me and
I'll forward a .pdf file with the details of all the seminars: Sat.-Sun., June 21-22 is the Pikes Peak Gem and Mineral Show, sponsored by the Colorado Springs Mineralogical Society and held at the Phil Long Expo Center, Auto Mall Loop at North Academy Blvd., Colorado Springs. see the club's website at http://www.csms.us/ for more info. This is always a really nice mineral show, and we (the USGS) will have a booth here, so please come by and say hello. Show hours are 10-5 Saturday, 10-4 Sunday. Thurs-Sun., Aug. 7-10, "Contin-Tail" rock swap and mineral sale, at the Buena Vista rodeo grounds, Buena Vista, CO. An always-enjoyable outdoor "tailgating" sale by rockhounds and dealers of rocks, minerals, fossils, jewelry, etc.; free parking and admission, nice scenery, and the usual guarantees (almost) of typical mountain weather: morning sunshine and late afternoon wind and thunderstorms! Fri.-Sun., Aug. 15-17,
Lake George Gem and Mineral Show; "Local Specimens, Field Trips,
Free Admission, Free Parking!" P.S., two new publications that you may be interested in: Friends of Dinosaur Ridge has published A Guide to Triceratops Trail at Parfet Prehistoric Preserve, a 16-page color booklet, a guide to the fossil sites along the interpretive trail adjacent to the Fossil Trace golf course in Golden; available for $2.00 at the Dinosaur Ridge Visitor Center. The USGS has published a new geologic report with maps about the Table Mountain lava flows, by Harald Drewes: "Table Mountain Shoshonite Porphyry Lava Flows and Their Vents, Golden, Colorado", USGS Scientific Investigations Report 2006-5242. The 28-page booklet can be viewed or downloaded online at http://pubs.usgs.gov/sir/2006/5242/ or printed copies may be purchased for $16.00 at the USGS Map Store, Building 810, Denver Federal Center, open 8-4 weekdays; or call 1-888-ASK-USGS for mail orders ($5 per order postage & handling charge). Please note, only a very limited (less than 50) number of printed copies of this booklet are available. Here are some notes about several new or relatively new USGS publications (and things accessible on our website) that may be of interest to you: Geologic Time Chart Posted
on the USGS web pages is a new and up-to-date chart of geologic time;
prepared by the USGS in collaboration with the International Commission
on Stratigraphy. The chart can be viewed and downloaded online as
a two-page .pdf file, the first being a description of it and the
second page the full-color chart. http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2007/3015/
or, direct to the pdf file at, http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2007/3015/fs2007-3015.pdf
Precambrian Time--The Story of the Early Earth is another excellent new USGS brochure--for those who think geology is cool stuff. This 6-page brochure contains text, photos, a time chart, and references, about the early history of the earth. It is USGS Fact Sheet 2007-3004, published June, 2007, and can obtained free of charge as a glossy-paper copy at the USGS Map Store on the Denver Federal Center, or it can be viewed and downloaded online at http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2007/3004/ Geologic Map of the U.S.:
another new USGS publication is USGS Circular 1300, "About the
Geologic Map in the National Atlas of the United States of America",
by John C. Reed and Charles A. Bush. This is a 48-page booklet containing
text and color satellite images, describing the kinds of geologic
features that can be seen on the geologic map of the U.S. This Circular
is free, if you request it at the USGS Map Store in Building 810 on
the Federal Center. The map it refers to can be purchased over-the-counter
or ordered, for $7.00; ask for USGS map product #207470, "Geology,
the National Atlas of the United States". This is a poster-sized
map depicting a simplified geologic map of the conterminous U.S. +
Alaska and Hawaii. The map is described online at http://pubs.usgs.gov/atlas/geologic/
, including a link to a .pdf file of the map (viewable at different
scales) at http://pubs.usgs.gov/atlas/geologic/usgeoplot.pdf
The USGS has recently published a series of maps about the historic occurrence of asbestos in mines of different parts of the U.S., the most recent of which is, Reported Historic Asbestos Mines, Historic Asbestos Prospects, and Natural Asbestos Occurrences in the Southwestern United States (Arizona, Nevada, and Utah), by Bradley S. Van Gosen; USGS Open-File Report 2008-1095. This includes a map, text, and pictures, and can be viewed at various magnifications or downloaded as a .pdf file at http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2008/1095/ . Other recently published maps in the same series cover asbestos deposits in the Eastern U.S. http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2005/1189/ , the Central U.S. http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2006/1211/ , and the Rocky Mountain States http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2007/1182/ ; the Rocky Mountain map includes Colorado. These are not available as printed maps, only as the downloadable files. Let me share one last item, a url link to some pictures for those who may be interested. Some of you may know, or have figured out, that in mid-February I was away for 10 days in Tucson, Arizona, annual site of the world's largest gem and mineral show, which attracts dealers and visitors from all over the world. (Among many other things we have a USGS booth there which I help prepare, though I travel to Tucson at my own time and expense--we don't have a budget to cover that kind of thing.) The links below are to two separate picture albums. Paste each of these (rather long) url links into your internet browser, and the "aol Pictures View Share" page should open up (make sure you get the whole url line into your browser url as one intact line of characters.) You do not need to register or log in or anything, just click on "View album as guest". You will have a choice to manually "view" all the pictures, or to click on "slide show" which will scroll through them all at a default speed of 5 seconds per slide. The first of the albums is of the Tucson mineral show and minerals. The second, for those interested, is an album of southwest scenery and nature in the mountains around Tucson and on my driving trip from Denver to there and back. Link to Tucson mineral
show pictures: (click on View Album as Guest button, then click on
Slideshow button) Arizona & New Mexico
nature & scenery slide show: (click on View Album as Guest button,
then click on Slideshow button) ****************************************** |
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